801 Salon continues to grow and evolve. From its humble beginnings at Vis, an eyewear store on 800 East, the event leapt into a new space — Church and State, a converted church across from the Main Library downtown — and announced Saturday, May 20, at its most recent edition, that it had acquired non-profit status. From one non-profit to another, congratulations!
Like many of our past and current programs, 801 has blurred the line between work-in-progress and finished work for a non-traditional setting. This show tipped to the latter, but it benefited from the charm and shape of Church and State, which is a large, homey space full of comfy seating and lit with Christmas lights.
The cast of The Rate We Change.
I had seen Kellie St. Pierre’s piece The Rate We Change before at the MFA show at the University of Utah. The work makes use of a spinning circular platform which the performers keep turning continuously throughout the duration of the action. I liked this piece in its original environment, where the platform disappeared into the black void of the theater, but I was surprised that I liked it even more in this intimate setting where I could see the dancers sweat and struggle to mount and dismount, like a hungry pack of youths sharing a single, spinning skateboard. Jessica Boone, whose presence on and off the disc radiates a warm calm, was particularly striking in this work.
My other favorite of the evening was a solo by Stephanie García, which explored what it means to be homesick, in her case for Mexico City. (Parenthetically, although I can’t claim it as my home, I might be willing to agree with Stephanie that Mexico City is the greatest city in the world.) I am consistently impressed by Stephanie’s range and depth as performer. She began behind us on the balcony, speaker in hand, and took the whole audience out dancing with her in a wave of nostalgia for the metropolis that segued seemly into a monologue, in which she hilariously left her heart (an actual wooden prop, gaudily painted in graphic detail) in the hands of an audience member. Stephanie pulls things off that are hard to explain, let alone imagine someone else succeeding at. There was a long mimetic sequence near the end of this piece in which she seemed to traverse every emotion and (nearly) every absurd encounter she’s experienced since moving here. In the hands of another performer, it might have been a mess. Stephanie made it somehow sublime.
Samuel Hanson is the executive director of loveDANCEmore.